The Fall is easily the most visually stunning film of this or any year in at least the past decade.  It was co-written and directed by Tarsem Singh (you can always tell when some jealous critic hates him because he comments on how Tarsem only goes by one name) and it’s a beautifully made adult fable about the healing power and strength of love.  The Fall is full of wonderfully evocative scenery and beasts (dead trees, deep blue buildings, palaces, elephants swimming along in the ocean) and it weaves a tale of good versus evil, real world versus fantasy world that recalls the recent Pan’s Labyrinth.  It’s not as good as Pan’s but its also a more gentle film, and nowhere near as violent or disturbing.  Tarsem is more of a visual master than a storytelling one though, and at times The Fall seems to get stuck in its own artsy bubble, but the film recovers and the ending is quite touching and beautiful. 

The Fall is about an injured stuntman named Roy who is in a hospital in the early 1920’s (Lee Pace) who meets a young girl named Alexandria who is also staying at the hospital.  Roy tells Alexandria a fantasy story about 5 mythical heroes (Pace himself is the masked bandit) who team up to defeat the tyrant General Odious.  A nasty villain who lives in a decadent palace and hangs his enemies in artsy ways upside from his massive ceiling.  As Roy’s psyche gets worse and more disturbed, his story becomes increasingly violent and grotesque, but The Fall is really about a celebration of life and not giving up on a bad hand that you are dealt, it’s not depressing in the least, despite a theme of suicide that runs throughout the film.  The Fall is really a film for adventurous fans of the fantasy genre and probably won’t appeal to a very wide audience, but I found it worthwhile and visually stunning.

The Fall was completed by acclaimed music video/commercial director Tarsem back in 2006 and is finally making its way around the country in limited release.  The film made me like it more and more as it went on and it’s definitely a film worth seeking out on the big screen, it will lose a lot of its magic on DVD.  The performances are all fine and I enjoyed the way the people in real life also appeared as characters in Roy’s fantasy story (a technique used as far back as Wizard of Oz and as recently in the excellent MirrorMask).  The gorgeous scenery and award-worthy costumes and design make it worth seeing.  The storytelling is far from perfect but I’ll take a flawed and visually stunning film over the usual summer dreck any day of the week.

Film Grade: B+

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